Friday, August 26, 2011

Catastrophes

This had been a weird year, you know? You remember those few days in the spring when tornadoes seemed to be flying across the whole country -- including the one that hit Joplin? Several days before Joplin, a tornado swept through Mapleton, Iowa, not too far from Sioux City here. Destroyed maybe a third of the town. We have good friends in Mapleton, who fortunately had no damage or injuries, but it still seemed to hit close to home.

Then the Missouri River flooding, which was simply epic around here. I just heard yesterday that, now that the water is receding some, they've found that the section of I-29 down by Omaha that was underwater is destroyed, the ground underneath it completely mush. It's going to take a year or two for the ground to recover and the highway to be rebuilt. Un-be-lievable. If you don't live around here, you can't quite understand the impact of that.

Then there was the drought in the South and the fires in Arizona. The young lady who was our flowergirl lives in Arizona with her husband. They were vacationing in Maine and Kansas during that and I followed her conversations on Facebook about local friends clearing out their house for them and how close the flames were coming to her neighborhood. Wow. A thousand miles away, but again -- seemed to hit close to home.

Then there was the earthquake this week. How come nothing exciting like an earthquake happened in New Jersey while we lived there? (Oh, wait -- there was 9-11. Yeah..) And now it seems a hurricane is bearing down on our old Jersey stomping grounds this weekend. Good heavens.

If I didn't know better, I'd wonder if old Harold Camping was on to something. October 21st, you say now, Harry? Hmmm. That's after Hyllningsfest, before Halloween. That'll work.